I will be reviewing games for the Wii U and the 3DS from my own gaming library. This includes virtual console games as well.

Menu

Super Metroid Review

As promised, here’s Super Metroid. It’s time for Take me Back Tuesday! Ready, Go!

Presentation

Think back to the Super Nintendo era. Then look at this game. The graphics along with the enemy and boss designs are impressive. Samus and her ship look good and stand out in the environment that is a foreign planet like they should. Some upgrades will even change the color of your suit, giving a real sense of your growing power. The music is worthy of your attention; it sets the mood very well and is memorable. The boss battle music is especially enjoyable. It will create an atmosphere of intensity and urgency, making you feel like you’re going against an extremely powerful opponent (and you are).

Story and Gameplay

The story starts off with Samus explaining the circumstances of the adventure you’re about to go on. Having delivered a Metroid larva who has confused Samus to be her mother to the planet Ceres, the bounty hunter was on her way to find another job when a distress signal turns her around. She finds one of her main nemeses Ridley stealing the larva. Samus has to travel to Planet Zebes to retrieve the Metroid with the Space Pirates in her way.

The first thing that needs to be said is that Super Metroid seems to do everything right. One of the first experiences you’ll go through is the feeling of helplessness. This inspires you to strive to become stronger. The feeling of progression in video games is one of the most aspired feelings to achieve, and Super Metroid does a great job of that.

You’ll be dropped on a mysterious planet with only the end goal in mind, which is to save the larva. This will make the game feel open-world while creating a main structure to follow by putting you in a powerless position whenever you have wandered to an area you’re not yet allowed to explore. The decision of letting you try to explore farther than you can is brilliant. The game teases you with areas that you thought you could roam right before putting an obstacle in your way to stop you. This concept conjures your curiosity. You will wonder about and want to look for that next power-up that will let you overcome an obstacle that you have no chance passing in your current state. An example of this is the introduction of the grapple beam. Regardless of how you go about it, there will be platforms that you’ll deem impossible to get onto; those same areas will come to mind when you finally find the grapple beam. Almost every time you receive a new item, you’ll be forced to use it to leave the area where you found the item. The same idea is used for when you find the grapple beam. When you’re using it to move on to the next area, the memory of not being able to progress on a different part of the planet will be triggered. The feeling of satisfaction follows.

Satisfaction also comes from becoming stronger. Your suit will have multiple color changes to accompany the feeling of being more powerful. The best part is that after your new ability makes you feel unstoppable, the difficulty of enemies you encounter will be much higher. Both the feeling that you can achieve so much more and still have a challenge seeking out the next power-up are great for playing almost any game. A situation that really emphasize the continuity of challenge throughout the game is the anticipation of not being able to get through specific rooms without losing a decent amount of health. One room really stands out. When you enter it, you’ll notice a lot of spikes and Venus fly trap look-alike creatures on the floors and ceilings. Jumping too high or too low becomes a mistake. To complicate this, enemies attack you while you try to jump on to very small platforms.

Even knowing that this room is well designed, it only shows up once. No other room is all that similar to it, and they can still provide a similar struggle to get through. Sometimes just thinking, “I’m going to run through this room and avoid as much damage as possible,” is an acceptable and sometimes difficult thing to accomplish.

The times when it’s not encouraged to think this way is if you haven’t been in a specific area yet. There are so many secrets items all over the planet that you never know if you’re missing one in a room that seems straightforward. Even rooms that exclusively give you an item and seem to only give one thing can have a hidden hallway or item in another area of the room. It seems that every time you find a new ability you have to walk around the entire planet once more because there are places you never thought would have significance until you’ve seen what Samus is capable of. This may sound like a drag, but the prospect of getting an extra boost from new power-ups makes the journey worthwhile and fun.

If there’s one thing that’s important about games that give you new abilities, it’s consistency. Throughout Super Metroid, when you add things to your suit, the planet doesn’t suddenly forget that you have multiple abilities to help you overcome obstacles. After finding items like the morph ball power bomb and the grapple beam, you will use them until the game is completed to find new items and progress through the game. Every item ends up being useful in some way or another throughout the experience. Also, if for some reason you need to remove an ability, you can take off parts of your suit at any time.

The constant use of different abilities is apparent when fighting new and old enemies. When you find a new item, you’ll realize how to destroy enemies you couldn’t before. When you meet new enemies, you’ll flip through a bunch of your abilities before realizing you need to use an older weapon that you may not have used recently. Once you become extremely powerful, enemies will have new patterns that need to be discovered before using any of your items. This is the same concept used for boss fights. The difference is that instead of making the bosses difficult to damage like the smaller enemies, the bigger bosses are harder to avoid and take a lot more damage to defeat. Unless you find a pattern in the bosses’ movements and combine that with your own pattern, you will lose health much faster than they will. Also, Super Metroid punishes you for being damaged a lot more than other games; when hit, Samus will flinch and be moved back considerably, and the cooldown for the next time you can be hurt is a very short duration.

The one thing that I can say that could be frustrating is that new items are not explained; with that said, this is not a negative thing. In fact, if this becomes frustrating to some gamers, it speaks to the change in gaming culture. Video games have become easier over the years, and more gamers expect to be told how to do everything instead of having to figure out how to play like a pro. Another thing that stands out as an “old-school” gaming mechanic is what happens when you have died. When killed, you will have to start at the last save point. No matter how far it is or how many items you collected between the time of your death and the time when you saved the game, you have to start that far back. Newer games become more forgiving as time passes, and gives revival and save points more frequently. Playing Super Metroid on the Wii U can help you avoid this if you don’t want to go through that experience. You can simply create a restore point before a challenging part of the game and restart if you fail.

Things to Note

Super Metroid has become a very competitive game, and gamers have found ways to break sequence and speed run the game in a way that makes the experience very different than explained in this review. Some players find it possible to beat the game in under an hour while a playthrough with 100% completion could take anywhere between 8 and 10 hours. The idea of trying to beat your own completion time along with the sheer fun of playing the game adds to the replay value.

-Memorable boss battles with patterns that are distinct but still can be a challenge to counter

-Power-ups earned are used throughout the game even if they are earned earlier on

-Classic Metroid music is suited for the tone of the game and catchy

-Abilities and strength increase to satisfying levels while still making enemies a challenge to fight

The Acosta Statement

Did you miss the 30 cents sale for this game? So what?! It may not be the lengthiest game, but it is one of the best gaming experiences any system has to offer. There’s a reason Super Metroid has won awards and is one of the most critically acclaimed games to exist. If you have a Wii U or a Wii, there’s no reason to avoid this game. Buy Super Metroid and enjoy a masterpiece.